Michael Bush played most of last season with a broken bone in his shoulder
Hockey players get a lot of credit for toughness ("Hey, he's carrying around the Stanley Cup while he bleeds from the cheek! That's a hockey player!") and those guys certainly are tough. No question.
But what about a football player who had multiple car accidents each Sunday last fall with 300-pound men while dealing with a broken bone in his shoulder?
Running back Michael Bush had a startling revelation to the Chicago Tribune that he played from Week 2 last season until he was placed on injured reserve with a rib injury with two games left with a broken bone in his shoulder.
"How did I play through it? The same way I was going to play through the rib injury until I realized (the rib injury) was worse than what it was,'' Bush told the Tribune. "That's just me. Once I broke my leg (in college) … if it ain't my leg and it ain't my feet and I can still walk around and run, I'm going to play.''
The thing is, you have to assume there are dozens more of these stories in the NFL that never get told.
The Tribune said it was a glenoid fracture, which causes instability in the shoulder, and an orthopedic surgeon told the paper that the recovery generally involves three-to-four months in a sling. He did not mention if he thought it was a good idea to barrel into B.J. Raji or Ndamukong Suh with a glenoid fracture.
(It's also fairly curious that the Bears never listed Bush on the injury report for his shoulder last season, but perhaps broken shoulders aren't worth worrying about for those purposes.)
Bush said he is healthy and ready to go this season. If he needs to miss any games due to injury, we can be fairly certain it's serious.
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